The HTC Desire was released in Australia on the 27th April 2010 by Telstra, who unfortunately have a six month exclusivity deal with HTC.

Not wanting to leave my current provider (3) or plan, I decided it was best to import the Desire from the UK. I chose Clove Technology, paid considerably less than what Telstra offer the phone for outright (which is $779), and it arrived in three business days.

Import caveat – the phone released in the UK is the “European” version, and has one small technical specification difference – the European version works on the 900MHz or 2100MHz HSPA/WCDMA network, not the 850Mhz UTMS network that Telstra’s NextG uses.

In short, if you are using a European Desire on 3, you will not be able to use the “3G Roaming Zone” outside of the “Broadband Zone” (you will roam onto Telstra’s GSM network – the “Talk & Messaging Zone”). See 3′s roaming information for more details. The phone is also compatible with Optus and Vodaphone networks.

And if you are still worried about the European version on the Australian 3 network – I have had no problems on both the 3 network or roaming outside of the 3 network. When roaming I could still read email, surf the internet, and make calls. I was also able to easily connect to Planet 3 using 3′s APN settings.

Setup was easy – when you power on the Desire for the first time, you pop in your Google account credentials, and it syncs your contacts and email to the phone. Twitter, flickr, Facebook and other service accounts can also be added.

The first feature of the Desire that made me realise what I was missing out on was WiFi connectivity. Whilst this has become standard with a lot of phones now, it’s ‘newness’ (in my mind) really stood out! Checking the news each morning on my phone no longer counts on my mobile phone bill, rather my home ADSL bill, which is much cheaper.

Navigating around the Desire’s menus and functions with your finger is very easy, and everything is very crisp and bright on the 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen. Menus and programs load fast, and there doesn’t appear to be any noticeable lag.

The battery life so far has been fine. I have been able to get away with charging it for a few hours (2 to 3) each night, however I have not yet tested how long it will last without a charge. My feeling (based on battery drain) is about 2 days worth of charge, depending on how much you use the phone.

Tethering to my laptop was an absolute breeze too. I plugged the Desire into the laptop over USB, selected “Internet sharing” on the menu that popped up on the Desire, and the laptop (Ubuntu 10.04) automatically connected to the internet. It was that simple.

Downloading and installing apps from the Android Market is very easy, the only hard part is choosing which apps are worthy of downloading! The star rating and the number of downloads helps in this regard though. So far I have downloaded ConnectBot (an SSH client) and Bubble (a spirit level), as well as a few free games to try out.

In a nut shell – the HTC Desire has changed my phone world. It feeds me my email and twitter (rather than me asking the old Nokia for it), and makes browsing the web something I want to do, not need to do. The on-screen keyboard is easy to use (especially with auto-correction of typos), and the little things like WiFi, SMS message threading and the weather made me realise what I was missing out on.

If you are looking for a new phone, I would highly recommend the HTC Desire.

• HTC Desire at htc.com
• HTC Desire at Clove Technology – £330GBP

Specifications
Screen: 3.7-inch 480×800 AMOLED touchscreen
Camera: 5 Megapixel autofocus with LED flash
Operating system: Android 2.1
Input: Dual-touch with HTC Sense interface
CPU: Qualcomm QSD 8250 (Snapdragon), 1 Ghz
Memory: 512 MB flash, 576 MB RAM
Memory card: 32 GB microSD (Maximum, mine arrived with a 4GB card)
Connectivity: Europe/Asia Pacific: HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz; UMTS 850 Mhz (Telstra Australia); GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz; Wi-Fi (802.11b/g); Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR;
Battery: Li-ion 1400mAh
Physical size: 119 (4.7) x 60 (2.36) x 11.9 (0.47) mm (inch)
Weight: 135 g (4.8 oz)
Form factor:Candybar smartphone
Other: Proximity sensor, FM Radio, Facebook, Twitter, MS Exchange, compass, GPS, A-GPS, Google turn-by-turn navigation, Flash 10.1 enabled

Trying to decide what camera to replace it with was a world of hurt with so many makes and models and features to choose from. I wanted the ability to shoot video, SD memory card support, lots of control (shutter speed and aperture priority, among other things) and it had to cost me less than $1000.

What I quickly realised was that I was after a certain type of digital camera – a bridge digital camera.

After some research, I narrowed down my choice to the Panasonic DMC-FZ28 and the Canon SX1 IS. I won’t compare the two for you – plenty of other sites do that already, but because of the better (and stereo) microphones and the longer zoom, the Canon won the battle.

Canon PowerShot SX1 IS (image courtesy canon.com.au)

The Canon PowerShot SX1 IS

The SX1 IS packs a 10 mega pixel CMOS sensor, 20x optical zoom lens, and records movies at the full high definition resolution of 1920×1080 pixels.

It features optical image stabilisation, a 2.8″ articulated LCD (‘vari-angle’ – the LCD swings out and can be rotated), RAW image capture out of the box (the firmware update for RAW support is already applied), face and motion detection and the Dig!C 4 image processor.

In the box comes the camera, lens cap, neck strap, lens hood, 4 AA alkaline batteries, RCA stereo video cable, USB cable (USB A to USB mini), a wireless remote control and the usual software CD and printed manual.

I also purchased an Inca battery charger and 4 AA rechargeable NI-MH battery pack, and an additional spare set of the same batteries.

Using the camera is pretty straight forward, at least when using the Auto mode. It is just like any other digital camera – point and click. The optical zoom is very impressive, and as you hone in on something in the distance, you wonder when it will stop. Once you reach 20x zoom, the 4x digital zoom takes over, and then it doesn’t stop until 80x.

However the Auto mode is not the reason why I brought this camera. After following some of the excellent workshops over at dslrtips.com, I was able to leave Auto mode, and by adjusting things like the aperture priority and shutter speed I have been able to achieve some pretty cool effects.

Whilst I still have plenty to learn when it comes to all the different features and settings of this camera (and the basics of photography for that matter), the SX1 can still be used by anyone to take great photos. The zoom really impresses me, and the ability to shoot full HD video is great.

Once I have had a chance to take some better than average photos I will post them up, and once I am off around the world there will be plenty of shots for all to see.

With an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, 160GB hard disk drive and 10.1 inch matte finish LCD, the agora is well equiped. Coming in two versions, the agora and the agora pro, they differ by the amount of memory (1GB vs. 2GB) and the battery size (3 cell vs. 6 cell). The agora is priced at $499 and you will pay $539 for the agora pro.

Screen

The 10.1 inch LCD meets the ‘sweet-spot’ size that most speak of in netbook land. After a consultative process on the Kogan blog, it was agreed that a matte finish was best, and I have to agree.

The agora’s LCD is very usable outside, where a gloss screen would often reflect the sun into your eyes. The native resolution is 1024×600.

Keyboard

The keyboard is easy enough to use – and didn’t take too long to adapt to. The only issue I had at first was the location of shift key in relation to the double quote key – it sits centered above the right shift key, whereas you would normally find it to the left of the shift. Not a deal breaker in the least, but programming on the agora at first resulted in some colons appearing where a double quote should have!

It is also worth noting that the blue function keys are well laid out. Page up and down, along with home and end are function keys placed on the arrow keys, and there are plenty of other function keys along most of the top row of the board, allowing you to sleep, turn on and off the wireless adapter and control the volume and brightness – just to name a few.